In an article published six months before losing her battle with cancer, Elizabeth Edwards reflected on keeping our loved ones alive in memory.

It was 1968, and I was 19, sitting in the apartment of Kellam Hooper into the early morning hours, talking of things that must have seemed the most important questions we would face in life. The apartment was perfect Charlottesville, spanning most of the second floor of a lovely old home on a shady street given over to fraternities and late-night parties. And the boy was perfect: smart and easy, with a face more pleasant than handsome, and a grace about him.

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Dawn started breaking, and it was clear I needed to be returned to the approved housing in which women of that era stayed while visiting men's colleges. So, at an impossible hour, we walked the few blocks to the hotel where his parents, also visiting that weekend, were staying. Kellam called his father on the lobby phone: Could he borrow the car? His dad appeared, clearly unhappy, and handed him the keys with a "we'll-talk-about-this-later" look.

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That was the last conversation I ever had with Kellam. Not long after, he died in an automobile accident. Kellam and his open face and his grace were gone.

Years later, in 1980, I visited Charlottesville. I found that shady street and looked up at the windows spanning the room I remembered so clearly. Kellam, so long dead, was pressing a point or touching my arm as I spoke. He was alive in me as I stood there. When I went home, I wrote a story about that boy so full of possibilities, a story I threw into a drawer.

And then, in 1996, my own son, Wade, was killed in an automobile accident. For months, for years, I craved stories of Wade. I wanted to collect all the pieces of the boy I loved so dearly but who'd had, I knew, a life away from me. And I wanted to know, still want to know, that people remembered him. I realized then that I should have sent the story to Kellam's parents. His mother surely loved him as I loved Wade.

So, a quarter century after Kellam died, I set out to find Mrs. Hooper. I located Kellam's friend Joey Tennant, who'd survived the terrible accident. "I think about Kellam all the time," he said, "and I wonder if other people do." Improbably, Kellam's parents had moved to Charlottesville, so I called the only "Hooper" I found.

Hers was a little voice, and she seemed unsure of why I was calling. I told her I had known Kellam and had met her husband. Her husband had died, she said, and I was filled with regret. I told her I had written a story about Kellam that I wanted to share with her. I apologized, saying that it had taken my own son's death to see what my story might mean to her. He is remembered, I said. Oh, yes, she answered.

Still unsure of who I was, she told me she was getting her hair done that morning; she always did before bridge. Did she even understand?

She ended the conversation by asking, "Could you send that story right away?"

And I did--17 years late.

We were mothers, always--mothers of boys who had died, but still mothers who wanted their boys remembered. Certainly I would want someone who held a piece of Wade to send it to me right away. And now I know: It may take time to collect all those pieces, those gifts.